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Friday, December 13, 2013

Jerome Wakefield - Psychiatric Diagnoses: Science or Pseudoscience?

This is an interesting podcast from the good folks at the Institute for Ethics and Evolving Technologies (IEET) on the validity of psychiatric diagnoses - a very relevant topic here at the Evolution of Psychotherapy Conference. Many of the speakers we have heard so far do not use the DSM diagnostic protocols because they have little to do with the clients we see in our offices.

The standard for diagnosis is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which just released a 5th edition in 2013—but just how objective is it? This episode of Rationally Speaking features Dr. Jerome Wakefield, psychiatrist, PhD in philosophy, and author of "The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder." Julia, Massimo and Jerome talk about the arbitrariness of the DSM and the controversies around the boundaries of various mental disorders, including depression and sexual fetishes.